Jason has really taken Nutrition seriously.
As a diet soda junkie, a caffeine addict and a daily user of alcohol Jason's health was never really great no matter how much exercise he would do. Jason would often complain of being tired and of lacking energy. Joint pain and an aching back were daily struggles for him.
One day on the way back from a Team BeachBody meeting in Chicago with his parents Jason stumbled onto a movie called "Fat Sick & Nearly Dead". This movie is about a man with an autoimmune disease who had ballooned up to 310 lbs. He wanted to get healthier and decided to film a movie doing a 60 day juice fast while driving across America. Not only does he get in great shape but he also meets another man with the same rare disease who was up to 429 lbs. The both of them go on to fabulous results simply from juicing. This movie will make you do 2 things!
1) It will make you cry with joy for these two men! The compassion of helping one another is just amazing.
2) It will convince you to try juicing.
Most folks will try a juice fast with step by step direction right on their website called RebootYourLife. I did it and felt cranky for two or so days without caffeine but after that I felt amazing for the rest of the juicing! I ended up buying 3 different juicers and 2 different blenders. I recommend the Omega Vert 350 HD as the best most easy to use but still efficient juicer to use for the Reboot fast.
Well this fast made me feel great and got me watching more food documentaries. This was something that I had really avoided in the past because I did not want to get grossed out from the food that I was eating.
Instead, these movies have really open my eyes!
I recommend watching them in this order:
1) Fat Sick & Nearly Dead - http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com: Mentioned above.
2) Foodmatters or FoodMatters - http://www.foodmatters.tv: This movie features Andrew Saul Ph.D. who talks about how Niacin found in cashews works far better statistically than any pharmaceutical pill on the market for depression. Ian Brighthope Prof., M.D., who talks about the harm that we are doing to our bodies by eating too much highly processed, nutrient depleted foods. Which leads to horrible disease like cancer and heart disease. Vegan David Wolfe who talks about the harm that that is being done to our foods though pesticides, herbicides and genetic engineering in most all of the foods that we eat as farms get bigger and less responsible. Tony Robbins thinks so highly of David Wolfe that he is an instructor at Tony's $4,500 Life mastery course in Fiji. Charlotte Gerson who talks about healing through diet. This film really does a lot to inform us of the dangers of pharmaceuticals and pesticides in our foods and how a plant based diet can solve many diseases. It also talks about how more that 49% cooked foods in one meal will make your body treat the entire meal as toxic.
3) Forks Over Knives - http://www.forksoverknives.com: This film also features several people with serious health problems who heal themselves through, not juicing this time, but rather a simple plant based diet. This movie features 2 nationally renowned doctors. One Dr. T. Colin Campbell a nutritional scientist at Cornell University who did a 20-year study in China on the link between diets and disease. The other Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who was a heart surgeon and chair of the Brest Cancer Task Force at the Cleveland Clinic.
These two doctors come to the same conclusion, one from studying nutrition and the other from trying to cure diseases. The solution is simply to eat a plant-based diet.
This movie has great graphics and animations that show how heart disease can kill and how cancer can be induced in rats from simply increasing casein (found in dairy) intake above 20% of your diet. One of the animations also explains why we don't get full from the typical American diet. And how a diet rich in plant based products and essential fatty oils will trigger the full receptors in your stomach faster giving you a full feeling quicker. This allows us to eat less food but it is now more nutritious.
4) Food Inc. - http://www.takepart.com/foodinc/film: The filmmaker here says he was trying to make a movie about the high price of low cost food. He begins by showing us the state of the food industry especially concerning the meats chicken and beef. It shows you how inhumane most animals are treated in todays feed cages and pens. No matter how little you may concerned with the welfare of these animals you will be disgusted at how your food gets processed for your dinner table. There is no doubt in my mind that raising these animals so poorly in such disgusting conditions with so many drugs and genetically modified foods is bound to effect their own health and therefore that of our dinner plate.
The movie goes on to talk about how private the food manufactures have become and how they have even achieved legal rules against photographing any of their facilities. How is fair that the publication of any food processing plant is illegal when we are the ones eating what they are producing? Because we cannot see how it is being produced we cannot verify that it is being handled correctly.
The film also shows how the biggest of these food companies have lobbyists in Washington and even in the very government agencies (USDA and FDA) that regulate their own industries. The way that we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the past 10,000 years.
All hope is not lost though! The movie goes on to show some great examples of processing both meat and vegetables wen done in a responsible way. Although we may, as individuals feel powerless to change anything, the control really is in our hands. We vote every time we buy a product. If we choose the free range animal products and the organically grown pesticide free fruits and veggies then the huge supermarkets and food companies will be forced to follow suit by providing the food that we demand.
I am fortunate that I live in California and can choose between organic foods and their alternatives. An organic apple looks like an apple should look. It's chemical enhanced cousin looks and feels like wax fruit. It is disgusting and has not taken much attention to notice the differences.
We can also see from this film how change is already happening! I see more and more organic sections in my local supermarket every day. The rise of local farmer's markets and food co-ops is very exciting. Even Wal-Mart recently decided to take milk with RBST growth hormone off the shelves based on the fact that consumers where not buying it! When a company as big as that makes that kind of decision it changes how milk gets produced! This is only one small step but it proves that when we force our food to be labeled we can make more intelligent decisions and have more impact! Just think of the tobacco companies and how an industry acting irresponsibly can be changed.
5) Dying to Have Known or The Beautiful Truth or The Gerson Miracle - http://www.Gerson.org: In these movies Charlotte Gerson a 78 year old survivor of tuberculosis tells about how her Father's therapy of diet and cleansing has cured thousands. These movies about The Gerson Therapy are amazing and talk about healing some horrible diseases and how they are caused from pollution, chemicals, and mercury poising. Charlotte Gerson is used as a reference in just about all of the other nutrition documentaries she is now 90 years old an as sharp as a tack. If her methods have kept her this bright and healthy then these tacticts are something that we all need to brush up on. This is what her friends think of her: Charlotte Gerson 90th birthday video
6) Burzynski Movie - http://www.burzynskimovie.com/: This movie is about a controversial cancer treatment that appears to be working especially for children with brain cancer that most doctors won't even treat. The government concedes that his patients are being helped by his therapy but they still continue to persecute him. Apparently because if his Antineoplaston drugs are approved for public use, then it would allow a single scientist to hold an exclusive right to manufacture and sell these medicines on the open market. The pharmaceutical companies that have staff on the FDA don't like this and have even applied for and received patents on Burzynski’s discoveries in the government’s name. He continues to be investigated and has since the 1980's. This movie will shock you and show you that our government agencies that are designed to protect us are in fact very much against certain cures coming to market. Opting instead for toxic chemotherapy drugs that have not been updated since the 19070's and 1980's.
The Hippocratic oath is historically taken by physicians before they are allowed to practice medicine and includes the command "First, do no harm". I for one believe that no one doctor intends to hurt any patient. But when medicine becomes institutionalized and funded by private interests and nutrition is being taught little to none in today’s medical schools funded by big pharma. Well than good people can be taught wrong things and are then coerced into living by them in fear of loosing their license to practice their trade. It comes down to the differences in allopathic and osteopathic techiniques. Osteopathic doctors are DOs and Allopathic doctors are MDs. DOs treat the body as a whole and use the bodies own healing methods to find the root problems. Allopathic medicine (MDs) refers to the practice of using pharmacologically active agents or physical interventions to treat or suppress symptoms or pathophysiologic processes of diseases or conditions. I read that as MDs treat the symptoms where as DOs treat the body as a whole.
I feel that Hippocrates was right when he said "Let thy food be thy medicine, let thy medicine be thy food"
Our medicines can't help us if we don't take in the right fuel. Your car won’t run right if you give is water and not gas. Your body is the same way. It can’t run as well on processed foods and sugars. It needs nutritious natural plant based foods like humans has consumed as the majority of their intake for that last 10,00 years.
Approximately 106,000 Americans die from pharmaceutical drugs each year even while taken their medications as directed.
Watching these movies, all of which can be found for free online, will really make you rethink what you are eating.
David Wolfe at Life Mastery claims that your body rebuilds itself every 7 years. That is every cell in your body gets replaced with new cells that it generates itself. Just like your hair and nails grow so too does the rest of your body!
With that being said we want to do 3 things in order to be healthy:
1) Stop taking in all of the poisons into our bodies!
2) Clean and Detoxify our bodies of all the toxins that we have already absorbed.
3) Replenish our bodies with the proper nourishment that it craves.
Why? Just look at this next picture from The American Cancer Society!
So this means eat more raw or slightly steamed fruits and veggies.
David also goes on to show that 80% or all vegetarians first started with juicing!
That is how I started after watching the "Fat Sick & Nearly Dead" movie in late 2011. Now I eat 80 to 90% raw vegan. So if juicing is available to you then do it!
However, problems can arise with all of the time and energy necessary to get all of the Organic fruits and veggies. To then clean and extract all of their nutrition. By all means if you can do that, then that is the best way to get the most amount of nutrition quickest into your body!
But more realistically we don't all have that kind of time and resources to make all of our juices.
Fortunately there are a few saving graces out there! BeachBody has recently come out with a new nutrition line called BeachBody Ultimate. The first product that came available was Vegan Tropical Strawberry Shakeology.
This drink is sourced with over 70 ingredients from all over the world. With super foods like Sacha inchi, camu camu, wheat grass, Chia and flax seeds, goji berry, pomegranate, acai, pre and pro biotics and digestive enzymes it truly is nutrition in a glass. The ingredients are all dehydrated and then chopped up and mixed together in an exacting process to make it taste great with no artificial preservatives or sweeteners. Now when you rehydrate it all of the vitamins and minerals have not been heated off and killed. So, again if you can get all 70+ ingredients organically grown and combined in a method that tastes great and for less cost than the new Shakeology than by all means do that! But if you are not a full time world traveler and chef then just take a Shakeology a day and reap the benefits of all that health in one glass! I don’t miss a day of my Shakeology anymore. I won’t risk low energy and feeling bad by missing my shake. But don't just take my word for it watch this great video on how and why the new Vegan Shakeology was produced.
Unfortunately Shakeology is only recommended to use once a day! Life would get a little boring if we only consumed the same shake 3 to 6 times a day. Eventually you will want some whole foods an extra fiber to feel human.
That is where the New Ultimate Reset comes into play. The next new item in the BeachBody Ultimate nutrition line is the Reset Detox. This is a 21-day nutrition day program that not only detoxes your body but also teaches you proper nutritious diet. There are 3 phases to the new Reset: Reclaim, Release, and Restore. The problem with most so-called Detox programs is that they are very short lived. If they actually do cleanse your body of toxins they typically only last 3 to 5 days. This is simply not enough time for your digestive track to eliminate all of the toxins that you have accumulated through years of abuse. So most of these nasty chemicals will simply get reabsorbed into your blood stream again through your intestines. This is why the BeachBody reset is 21 days long.
Twenty-one days is also long enough to form healthy habits that you will continue for long after you are finished with the detox program. The Reset may be the first time that you try food like fennel, miso, kale, quinoa, tempeh and pine nuts and through this program you will find favorites that you want to stick with. All of the meals are listed in the diet guide and come with shopping lists, instructions on how to prepare them and even video tutorials for each dish! Every package comes with access to the extensive online support portal with groups of peers for motivation education and encouragement through all of the phases.
Not everyone will like every meal so BeachBody also provides an Ultimate Rest Kit with a month’s supply of the Vegan Tropical Strawberry Shakeology to substitute for any meal.
You will enjoy this program so much that there is even a continuation package that comes with extra supplements that you can use following the 21 days to maintain your progress.
If you have gotten this far thank you for caring about your own health enough to read through all of this material. I feel that by now you can probably tell how passionate that I am about health and nutrition! Most of us find something that we can get paid enough for to earn our keep. Some of us eventually find a passion that we love to do. But very few lucky people have those two things line up getting paid to do something that they love! That is true wealth! I am fortunate enough to have that opportunity and I and truly grateful for the ability to share that passion with you today to support your health and fitness goals.
Thank You!
